ARTICLES ABOUT BASEBALL BAT BY DATE - PAGE 2

A Lombard woman who prosecutors say had a history of psychiatric issues was ordered held Saturday in lieu of $3 million bail, accused of fatally stabbing her husband as he slept. After setting bond for Anka Misocevic, DuPage County Judge Patrick Leston approved a prosecution request to have a psychological evaluation performed. Misocevic, 49, has been charged with the first-degree murder of Zeljko Misocevic, 56, who died early Thursday from a single stab wound to the chest, according to authorities.

Moments after Marcy Cruz was sentenced Thursday to 22 years in prison for her role in one of Chicago's most notorious muggings, her father told reporters that she was paying the price for hanging out with the wrong crowd. "(He was) the wrong person to be with, but it's too late now," Edwin Cruz said of Heriberto Viramontes, his daughter's companion the night of the 2010 attack. "What happened has happened, and we just have to deal with it, and we just have to be strong. " Marcy Cruz provided key testimony this month at Viramontes' trial for the robbery and baseball bat beating that left an exchange student from Northern Ireland severely brain damaged and injured her friend.

Moments after Marcy Cruz was sentenced Thursday to 22 years in prison for her role in one of Chicago's most notorious muggings, her father told reporters that she was paying the price for hanging out with the wrong crowd. "(He was) the wrong person to be with, but it's too late now," Edwin Cruz said of Heriberto Viramontes, his daughter's companion the night of the 2010 attack. "What happened has happened, and we just have to deal with it, and we just have to be strong. " Marcy Cruz provided key testimony this month at Viramontes' trial for the robbery and baseball bat beating that left an exchange student from Northern Ireland severely brain damaged and injured her friend.

The shocking beating of a foreign exchange student and her American friend in a trendy, generally safe Chicago neighborhood in 2010 became an international symbol of the city's violence. Attacked from behind as they walked under a viaduct in Bucktown after a night celebrating their recent successes, Natasha McShane and Stacy Jurich were each struck on the head by a mugger wielding a baseball bat who snatched their purses and fled. As Heriberto Viramontes' guilt was announced in a Cook County courtroom Thursday evening, McShane, who was left severely brain damaged by the attack and no can longer speak, was back home in Northern Ireland unaware that a trial had even been going on for the past two weeks.

Attorneys for the man accused of brutally beating and robbing two young women in Bucktown attempted Wednesday to convince jurors their client was misidentified as the attacker, calling five police officers who testified about their initial roles in the 2010 investigation. Heriberto Viramontes, 34, is Hispanic, and his attorneys have built their defense on the fact that one of the victims, Stacy Jurich, initially told police her attacker was or could have been African-American. The defense finished putting on its case Wednesday after prosecutors concluded their evidence earlier in the day. Viramontes chose not to testify.

In recorded phone calls from the Cook County Jail played for jurors Tuesday, the man on trial in a brutal 2010 Bucktown beating and robbery admitted he attacked the women and said he needed the money for drugs or to help an exotic dancer get her belongings out of hock. It was the first time jurors have heard the voice of Heriberto Viramontes, 34, who is charged with 25 counts of attempted first-degree murder, armed robbery and aggravated battery on allegations he beat an exchange student from Northern Ireland and her friend with a wooden baseball bat. The exchange student, Natasha McShane, no longer can speak or walk unassisted.

The girlfriend of the man on trial in the Bucktown baseball bat beating testified today that he was “agitated” when she saw him later the night of the attack, moving his hands “emphatically” as he spoke. Kira Lundgren, now 25 and living in Plainfield, also testified that the day after the attack she saw her boyfriend, Heriberto Viramontes, and his co-defendant, Marcy Cruz, looking at a newspaper but that they wouldn't let her see what they were checking out. Lundgren was charged in 2011 with sneaking marijuana into the Cook County Jail to Viramontes, a felony that was later reduced to a misdemeanor after she agreed to testify.

A trauma surgeon who treated an exchange student from Northern Ireland who was brutally beaten with a baseball bat during a Bucktown mugging testified that the student was “making sounds but not comprehensible words.” Dr. Marius Katilius said Natasha McShane was only opening her eyes in response to pain after arriving at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. McShane suffered skull fractures above her right ear and bleeding on and around her brain, according to the testimony at the trial of Heriberto Viramontes, who is charged with attempted murder and armed robbery.

They both had so much to celebrate. So Stacy Jurich and her close friend, Natasha McShane, an exchange student from Northern Ireland , spent the night dancing - McShane in her favorite boots - before starting the half-mile walk back to Jurich's Bucktown home. The friends never made it because a baseball bat-wielding mugger attacked them, leaving McShane bleeding on the sidewalk under a Bucktown viaduct. Speaking publicly about the 2010 attack for the first time, Jurich, now 27, frequently broke into tears on the witness stand as testimony began Wednesday at the trial of Heriberto Viramontes on charges of attempted murder and armed robbery.